The official blog on Trillian development.

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of Trillian’s first release. 10 years ago, at 5 in the morning, Kevin and Scott were putting the finishing touches on the very first version of Trillian, 0.50. Our earliest effort was nothing more than a simple chat client built for IRC only, but we quickly realized that IRC wouldn’t be enough. As a result, basic IM support was added into the next release and we haven’t stopped moving since! In the last ten years, we’ve launched over 8 major releases of Trillian for Windows and ported Trillian to a host of other platforms, including Mac, iPhone, BlackBerry, and the web!

If you’ve been using Trillian for many years, now is a great time to support our small and independent company by purchasing Trillian Pro, currently on sale for only $15. If you’re already a Pro customer, feel free to send us some beer and pizza money in the form of a gift card and send it to a friend. In honor of our 10th birthday, we’re also unveiling our latest creation: Trillian 5 for Windows! A sneak peek website is online right now as we put the finishing touches on the first beta build, which will be available to all customers in the coming weeks.

Here’s to ten more years of organizing your online social world!

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on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Cerulean News.
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Amazing job, guys! Love the new native interface, new way of displaying feeds, new everything!
Though I really, really hope the current price politics aren’t gonna change with the synchronized chat history.
Can’t wait to try it now!

It looks very good, although I don’t share the excitement because some of those promised features will show on the 5th version of the client and not on the 4th as mentioned previously.

Even though it will be a great client, as I’m sure it will be, it will suffer from the same ‘unfinished’ aspects of Trillian 4 until later builds and then the 6th generation kicks in. If anything, I would love to see this program finished first and then see Cerulean Studios release the next generation.

Wow, that’s awesome. Finally… synchronized chat history. That’s something I’ve wanted for a very long time, especially now that I IM from my mobile devices, my laptop, and my desktops.

But, I’m sad to see that Trillian 5 for Windows is close to a beta, and yet Trillian for the Mac is still in alpha and there’s very little activity on it. While I paid for Astra Pro, I haven’t used it because I’ve converted all my machines to macs. Please show us mac users some love and release Trillian 1.0 for the Mac!

Great to see an adaption to the native style, integration into Win7 (it’s about time that developers start to use the sensor platform) and improved twitter integration is nice, too. Are there any plans to use the new skype sdk so the plugin won’t require to start skype anymore?

What I’d really like to know is if I buy pro now at $15 does this get me 5 at a reduced price or free? While I’d love to support you guys financially I dont want to buy the old version just for the new one to come out soon and I have to pay full price again.

This is awesome, what a happy surprise! While I’ll always love Trillian, it never seemed to fit well with Windows 7. I hope I’m not going to have to pay for it again, though (I already bought Trillian Astra.)

I remember installing Trillian 0.74 some time ago… by now, I’m owner of a Trillian Pro v4 license though.
I’d appreciate it if Trillian Pro owners could get an email once it’s available to immediately buy an upgrade license (or simply upgrade)… I’d certainly love that! Maybe even inside the client (with the update service)… ^^

Trillian 5.x will require a new payment, yes… will current 4.x license holders get a discount? PROBABLY … that’s just a guess as they usually do… can’t say for sure. Obviously with sync’d chat history they are going to need money. I will pay up to $100 for that feature alone.

@roboto, you misunderstand the Skype thing, the new API is only to have skype bundled into your program, it will still be a separate process in the background. What you want (as do the rest of us) is SkypeNet to open up to 3rd party clients, which they probably never will do. So while I can’t say they won’t switch to the new way of “controlling” Skype, it likely will only have some improvements and one of which will not be the complete lack of Skype in the background.

@Marc, Sacs and Jack … yes you will have to pay for 5.x … but nobody knows how much. Heck this could be far enough from now that 4.3 will even still come out. Only CS knows.

I’m glad to see them moving forward, but I do kind of agree with the previous posters – it would be nice for the devs to finish up what they’re planning for 4, and THEN work on 5. Either that, or give us a set of concrete milestones that they have for 4, and for 5, and keep us in the loop for them. I am not saying anything to be mean / point fingers or anything, but I am going to cautiously point out that a few features have been bumped back time and again, and a few people are getting sad about it. Webcam Support, for one, is one I would like to have – then I could completely uninstall WLM from my machine and never have to look at it again.

Sync’d chat history is a HUGE bonus, I must admit – running Trillian from 3 machines is a bitch to keep things synchronized. And then some. Even with the IM Merge program out there. (which, by the way, their DNS provider finally opened up again).

BUT. That aside, I like what they’re planning. And I cannot wait for the beta. But again, I would like some milestone markers – what has been done, what is going to be done.

Wow. Though I am excited about Trillian 5 (And particularly the synchronized chat history), I am a bit surprised to see that this is nearing Beta when it seems like Trillian 4 just shipped not really that long ago… It seems a bit premature.

As for the Synchronized Chat History feature, this is particularly exciting for me. But I hope a version of Trillian is released for Windows Phone 7. As I plan on getting one and being able to synchronize my chat history between these two clients would be very nice.

Congratulatins! That was a big surprize for me. But I have a little question: Is it a good time to purchase Trillian Pro Version 4.2 or should I wait until Version 5 is ready, for I only want to pay once?

Congratulations for this great work till 10 years now.
The only thing I wonder about is why there will be a new Version by now.
Trillian 3.x was the standard for a long time (5 years). Then Trillian Astra hit the High Street and now it will be superseded by Trillian 5 just after 2 years?

Or did the time really ran so fast with Trillian Astra? Possible I think =D

Did you not go to the link mentioned in the blog post ? On that link it mentions Synced chat. This is taken directly from the link mentioned:
Synchronized chat history
Never miss a message again with Trillian 5′s fully synchronized chat history. The power of the Trillian network ensures your contact list, accounts, and chat history are automatically shared between your desktops and phones!

Congratulations on the 10th anniversary but have you completely lost your mind Cerulean?! This looks like the next version of MSN messenger not Trillian! I dont like it at all I’m staying on Astra as long as possible

I’m back on trillian after 4 years, version Astra 4.2 looks already ‘usable’ and I’m happy with it. But THIS 5.0 version looks absolutely freaking good. Congrats on the UI desigers who made this so yummy that wants all to have it. now.

Impressive interface, or at least what we can see. Sync Logs for chat? also great, why not. If this goes forward, this will be the first time in my life I’m paying for an IM.

@Eric, you didn’t even read it, sync’d chat history is the MAIN reason for Trillian 5, and yes it will work with Cordonata and other 4.x skins and themes.

@Matt and Jim … sync’d chat logs means huge changes, like stuff that would make a 5.x title and repayment necessary and worthwhile. It makes sense.

@viceview, I agree those things are needed but the version number doesn’t matter. So lets say they are working on that stuff anyways, and it comes out on a certain date… who cares if its part of 4.x or 5.x … As long as it still gets added like it should, then its fine.

@sket, did you not read anything? You don’t have to have it look like that, you can use the 4.x skins.

@PeteBoat, 5.0 is a long way away, buy 4.2 while it is on sale and you will more than likely get a discount on 5.0 when it is time.

@Steffen, things have to change fast to stay on top.

@Kamen, then write version 5 on your screen with a marker… it doesn’t do anything yet, LOL

I’d rather like to see Trillian for Mac 1.0 before any further release of Trillian for Windows, as it is already quite good, but the Mac version… Well, let’s say there is plenty of space for improvement…

It’s potentially exciting, yes. But I was also pretty excited about the announcement that v4 was going into beta. It was, what, 5 YEARS later before it was actually available? I’m not holding my breath, but it’ll be nice to see whenever it comes out.

Wait? What? I’m sorry but no. I paid for 4 thinking that I would be receiving updates for several years and completed features (where the heck is my AIM video chat?) and now you’re moving on to another version that I have to buy again with what looks like pretty minor changes? Not cool, Cerulean Studios. Not cool at all.

Looks VERY GOOD!
I’m not using Windows much so I hope the changes will be implemented in the OSX client as well. I really like the synchornized chat history.
One important thing: I just bought a Pro License. Will I be able to use the License with Trillian 5?

Astra was announced November 21st, 2006 – meaning it was still a PRIVATE alpha … it then went through a limited alpha, then a public beta and then was released on August 14th, 2009 … so it was actually about 2 years and 9 months but that included the entire alpha cycle. 4.1 and 4.2 have been made and released since then and were MUCH faster/shorter development cycles.

So here they are talking about the BETA of 5.0 coming soon, and it isn’t the huge rewrite 4.0 required, so I highly doubt its going to be anything over a year. And honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t even that long.

[...] this week, Trillian’s developers -Cerulean Studios, celebrated its 10th anniversary by announcing Trillian 5. The new version will feature a brand new user interface, which is not only beautiful [...]

I’m very excited to see History Log Syncing, a feature I’ve requested in Trillian since Skype implemented it over 5 years ago. However, I’ve got to agree with VE6AY (http://blog.ceruleanstudios.com/?p=1442#comment-16927) and viceview51 that it’s nervy to charge for an upgrade after previously mentioned (and some feature previously in previous versions, like 2.x and 3.x) are not available. Where is DirectConnect for AIM? A weather plugin that again works with contacts? Actually functioning A/V? I’ve bought every paid version of Trillian since its inception and video and audio chat have never worked for me or friends of mine using Trillian, and despite multiple bug reports submitted through the years it still has yet to be addressed. Chat log syncing is a big feature, but what I think and, what I see echoed in the posts of others, is that Trillian needs to have the file transfer and A/V features that almost every mainstream protocol has implemented for the better part of a decade before moving on to frills.

Hey, happy birthday!
I’m using Trillian (free version) since version 4. Before that it wasn’t to my liking. But with that version, you finally convinced me.
And I have to say, the design remake of Trillian 5 looks really, really promising. I love the clear and simple look! I think it will integrate perfectly with my W7 screen appearance.
I can’t wait to try the first beta! And well, perhaps I might even consider buying the Pro version.

Speaking of uploading Logs…
i’ve been collecting logs since year 2000. Some logs are still in *.log format. Some are in XML format.
I’m using trillian on several devices. All devices have separate history. How do i merge history from several log types and several devices?
And another question is how trillian is goint to store history on servers. Mine is about 1GB.
Is it going to be encrypted/archived?

@Serjnyak, none of that information is released yet, but it will probably only store some of it, such as the last 30 days or last 100MB or something of that sort, with your desktop client downloading it when it is connected. I doubt they plan to host unlimited data for everyone.

Suggestion to Cerulean Studios: Move to a subscription model, and stop fast forwarding version numbers just to get money. A cheap (current price?) yearly subscription model would be ideal. It’s stupid to skip from 4.2 to 5. Just focus on the product, and keep the pricing model simple.

Otherwise, I’ll just stop using a desktop chat client all together, and just use Gmail. It’s already an inevitable change, but pushing new ‘major’ software too frequently is a deal breaker, especially when the only reason to do so is to force customers to repurchase the software.

Kinda raging a little bit after seeing this. It took them like a gazillion years to get Astra out there, and I don’t even want to think how long its going to take for 5.0? Or maybe it’s just a way to get more money… And thats okay. I know some of you are all giddy about the social networking features, but when I see it… I’d be more excited about improvement of the current IM protocols to exceed for voicechat/webcam options… photosharing? Are they going to update iRC so that it can accept file transfer commands? I cant remember… but Im pretty sure it CANT do that lol.

Or maybe fix MSN friend request bug? If they haven’t already that is ( haven’t tested it since the update ) Or fix the bug with the “Global Avatar” that makes it blurry on certain IM protocols including the Astra Signature? I hope these will be fixed. And I’d really like to be able to select avatars for each protocol, rather than this forced global avatar nonsense

Serjnyak Says stuff about log files in .xml format, I delete all .xml files and archive the .txt files. They are easy to read in pure text form and I hope I HOPE they dont dare change that into some hideous kind of MSN history log file, where you HAVE No option for plain text

I wonder if they’ll have fixed any of the bugs I reported for 0.74 yet… I can see a lot of new features (nobody asked for) in version 5.0 so I doubt they’ll have had the time to address any 0.74 issues as they’ve been really busy adding new features for the last few years so haven’t had time to look into bugs yet.

Honestly if I still see “1792370206723 requested they add you to their contact list” (instead of a NAME) I’m going to just go back to using MSN and ICQ proper.

I love skins, but like everyone else on here, the native look you guys have done looks awesome! Can’t wait to start testing! What I’m wondering is if you guys have done a complete rework and are using WPF for this…

Just so you guys know… you are THE BEST!!! I don’t care what anyone on this page says (although I know you’re always open for suggestions) people will always “want more!” I’m just telling you that it’s SO relieving not to have all the Yahoo, AIM, MSN, ICQ shell software on my computer (taking up space) when all I need is Trillian Astra! I paid for the Pro version and I think i’m going to get some gift cards for my hubby, daughter and mom/dad and bro and sister, too! They know how much I love this communication feature since I’ve been using it for well upward of 7 years and just in the last year went “Pro”. Everybody wants “more”… I’m just SO glad you guys/gals took the first step in creating this great software in the first place!!! Everyone has a “wish list”… and some get all “upset” and “in your face” when they don’t “get what they want”…. but I can tell you… that Trillian has been a lifesaver for me and a plethora of my colleagues (who also bought the Pro)! My daughter has a blackberry and is excited about the platform for Blackberry… I’m hoping that it might work for my Palm Pre, as well? If not, I’m just SOOO happy about Trillian… PERIOD! No wants… no disappointed smilies… no aggravation…. just big SMILES Happy Anniversary Trillian!! But you know what? It feels more like MY birthday!!!! WOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! ~ Karen

I hope this is signals the beginning of a flurry of updates in the services overall. The multiple platform approach is frankly the prime reason I am using Trillian (PC, Mac and iPhone client). As such, it’s a shame that the Mac client is lagging behind. The benefits of using a Mac and PC client from the same shop are much slimmer than they could be. Also, the web services are feeling a bit dated as well.

However, synchronized chat history between all these platforms is great news!

I stopped using trillian when astra came out due to the ugly convoluted UI, but I must say this looks absolutely beautiful and finally fits in well with windows. I will even buy it when it comes out. I am impressed that you are finally listening to al, the users who wanted a nicer more native UI.

@Michael Hart … NO .. subscription model was there all the way from 1.0 to 3.1 … it was ok but this is better and more fair. If you don’t want to pay for the new version, keep using 4.x or use 5.x’s free version. Nobody is forcing you to pay and the upgrade price is cheap. I could do all the math to prove to you that this is cheaper than what a subscription would cost as you are not paying except for major versions now. Syncing chat logs is probably the main reason for the major version change and it is entirely worth it to *most* people. If you only use GoogleTalk and don’t need the rest, then yeah maybe a kick-ass multi IM client isn’t for you.

@kat s … that is not possible. Nobody can connect to Skype’s network without the client. Sorry. No IM clients can do this.

@Jim and Brandon , you realize you could have had Astra look just like 3.1 did all this time right?

I don’t think that the new features justify a new version number. 4.5? Yes. 5.0? No.

Major features are:
* New UI (looks really nice, but not great, too plain)
* Sync. Chat Logs (I don’t use logs but this is very very nice feature, not worth a new version number, though)
* Foursquare (I don’t even know what that is and probably won’t work on another countries than USA or some European ones).

Opera would have rolled a .5 version. Valve is getting huge free updates to Team Fortress 2 that a lot of people bought for 3 dollars some years ago. Yes, I know that the business models are very different, but still, I’m getting a lot of bang for the buck from them. Not from Trillian, that it’s still quite bugged.

I probably won’t buy a new version, except if it comes with a very big discount (5 dollars would be the max I will pay for it, considering I’m a 4 Pro costumer).

Are you going to make it optional of logging into Astra or keeping all your contacts on the Astra server? That is the primary reason why I didn’t buy 4.0.. I don’t think that I should be forced to store my contact for different networks on your server.

Awesome! I’ve been using Trillian for almost 10 years. Never thought about switching to something else.

I will make one quick feature request… I see that you plan on implementing chat history to be synchronized between PCs, which I assume means it is stored in the Astra profile online. It would be sweet if Trillian 5 will automatically upload PAST history, or provide a way (perhaps a utility) to upload old LOG files so that all of our old history is there as well. Having used Trillian since before version 1, I have a LOT of history in log files.

Wow!!! Its 5 version! I hope it will be fantastic. And a little wish for you. Can trillian support Mail.Ru Agent protocol???(open prorocol) Its very popular IM…Russian users need it! Really!
P.S. Happy anniversary!

This is crap, Astra hasn’t even been out on the market for a year and you have already shelved it to work on a ‘new’ version? What, not enough money flowing in already so let’s make our loyal customers pay though the nose for stuff that should be added to the current version?

Great product. I’ve used trillian for the better part of the last 6 years and it’s always been the best. You guys seem to only be limited to your imagination which definitely makes you the better than all the other clients.

i updated to trillian 5 and the first thing it does is to automatically update even the PAST history!!!!! I strongly oppose doing such things without users’ prior consent! Please at least ask for confirmation before loading MY stuff to the web! THANKS!

By the way, now I HAVE TO going through the web interface to find a way to delete those already uploaded history and try to find a way to disable such upload. Before I can do so, I will most definitely stop using it.